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T IT A N K S ( ; r V 7 N Q J ) A T 



NovKMnLr- .'7th JS6v 



REV. ALEXANDER H. VINTOM, DO 

ITfictor of St Marlr'9 Church. New-\,"nr!r 

' 4 



NEW YORK : 
JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER/ STEREOTYPER, IND BINOIRR, 




CORNER OF FRANKFORT AND JACOB STRKETS 

1802, 



fi 






V 



MAN'S RULE AND CHRIST'S REIGN. 



A SERMON", 



PREACHKD ON 



T H A N K S G^ I V I ]Sr G^ DAY, 

November 27th, 1862, 



REV. ALEXANDER H. VINTON, D.D., 

• ! 
RECTOR OF ST. mark's CHURCH, NEW-YOKK. 



JOmsr A. GKAY, PRINTEE, STEEEOTYPEE, AND BINDER, 

FIRB-PROOP BFILDINQS, 

CORNER OF JACOB AND FRANKFORT STREETS. 

1832. 



160S 
^05 4"" 



-V 



^^ THANKSGiYiurG Day, Nov. 27, 1862. 

To THE Rev. Alexander H. Vinton, D.D. : 

Deak Sir : At the close of the services in St. Mark's 

Church, this day, there was a general expression of wish 

that the sermon there deUvered by you should be printed. 
Sympathizing entirely and earnestly in that wish of 

your congregation, in our own and in their behalf, we 

beg permission to have it published. 

With cordial and affectionate respect, 

HAMILTON FISH, A. V. H. STUTVESANT, 

J. B. HEERICK, S. A. DEAN, 

JOHN A. ISELIN, LEWIS M. RUTHERFORD, 

J. FAITOUTE, MEIGS D.- BENJAMIN, 

WM. REMSEN, WM. H. SCOTT-,' - 

E. B. WESLEY, E. S^/JH^NI/ER, 

CHARLES EASTON, P. C. SCHUYLER, 

H. B. RENWICK, THOS. M. BEARE, 

ALFRED H. EASTON, THOMAS McMULLDT. 



To THE Hon. Hamilton Fish, and others : 

Gentlemen : I thank you very sincerely for the kind 

feeling that prompts your request for the iwblication of 

my sermon of Thanksgiving Day, and cheerfully submit 

it to your disposal. 

ALEXANDER H. VINTON. 

St. Marie's Rectory^ Dec. 1st, 18C2. 



MAN'S RULE AND CHRIST'S REIGN. 



EzEKiEL 21 : 26, 27. 

" Thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem, and take off 
the crown : this shall not be the same : exalt him that is low, and 
abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it : 
and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is ; and it 
shall be given to him." 

Zedekiah was one of a series of kings wlio 
had profaned the sacred royalty of Israel, and 
God was about to terminate not only his reign 
but his dynasty. The crown and the diadem 
were both to be taken away from Jerusalem, 
that is, the kingly and priestly powers were to 
be superseded by the rule of a foreigner and a 
pagan. Nebuchadnezzar was to be their future 
lord, and Babylon their royal city. Not that 
his reign should be lasting or his power per- 
petual ; for there was an ancient covenant of 
God, that of the fruit of David's loins should 
come forth a king who should reign forever. 

In this grand revolution of Israel God was 
only preparing the way for his Messiah, and not 



by this revolution alone, but by others that 
should follow the track and tread on the heels 
of this. The Babylonian dominion was to be 
followed by the Persian ; the Persian by the 
Grecian, and that again by the Roman; and 
then should come the splendor and joower of 
God's royal Christ. "I will overturn, over- 
turn, overturn it: and it shall be no more 
until he come whose right it is ; and it shall 
be given to him." 

This very lesson was taught to Nebuchadnez- 
zar himself, for in the remarkable vision inter- 
preted by Daniel he saw a great image com- 
posed of various metals, of which Babylon was 
the golden head, representing three great rev- 
olutions of empire, and after these one grander 
still, in which a stone, cut without hands from 
the mountain, should break in pieces all other 
dominion, and should stand forever. This was 
the divine regency of Christ. Thus it is, that 
temporal events help on divine plans. Thus 
in the mind of God political and religious ideas 
lie side by side. The nation and the Church are 
coordinate forces in effecting the divine cove- 
nant, and Jesus Christ is King of nations as he 
is King of saints. There are certain grand, fix- 
ed purposes of God which run strai^^ht throuo-h 
the order of the universe, from the beo-innino- 



to tlie end. There is to them no past nor pre- 
sent nor future — that is, no finished facts can 
add proof to their certainty — no present force 
or lack of force can stop them from working 
out into life and action before our very eyes ; 
and no contingency or peradventure can, for an 
instant, bar their way to final completeness. 
Not that the Divine purposes drive on to their 
inexorable results alone, treading down nature 
and art and man, as if to show how superior 
God is to the world that he has made, and to the 
laws he assigned for it. It is just as true that 
man is in the world as that God is — man as he 
was made and is not yet unmade ; in the image 
of God, with intelligence and a will — man a 
doer not less truly than God a doer. A Divin- 
ity moving sublimely in the world does not ex- 
clude humanity working actively, although he 
shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will. 

These Divine purposes running in parallel 
strands through the whole course of things, 
and fastened at each end, are the warp of the 
universe into which all its history is to be pic- 
torially woven. 

They are wound around the great axis of the 
world, and wrap up the coming centuries, fold 
beneath fold, and then as the cylinder revolves 
the warp is unrolled, and comes out to meet and 



suj)ply the days and montlis and years and ages, 
and as it comes, man works into that steady 
warp his ever-shifting woof. He tosses his busy 
shuttle back and forth between the strands, 
with bound and rebound, day and night, with 
many-colored threads and many-patterned forms, 
until the straight, strong warp-threads are cov- 
ered up and hidden, and the whole product 
seems to be made by man alone. He has work- 
ed his mind and passions and will into it so com- 
pactly, that history is made up of the freaks of 
his fancy — the whims of his willfulness, the 
orderly shapes of his intelligence in business, lit- 
erature or government ; and colored throughout 
with the complexions of his loves and hates ; 
silvery and golden for his better affections, 
burning crimson for his lusts, and deadly pur- 
2)le for his antipathies and loathings. So that 
all history seems man-made. Yet it is not so. 
This is only the filling and the woof God's 
pui'poses are still the foundation and the warp. 
Let any bold hand attempt to thwart these pur- 
poses, to traverse the course of Providence, to 
tear the fabric of events across the fibre, and 
the man learns a lesson of profitable modesty. 
He may seem to force a hole in the texture, but 
the rent will run with the warp, and it is only 
man's work that is broken across, not God's. 



So mucli we are taught by universal experience 
as well as Eevelation, while Eevelation adds 
another truth that experience is not yet ripe or 
universal enough to learn of itself; that is, that 
God's purposes in the world have ultimate 
reference to the glory of his mediatorial Son. 

We gather glimpses of this grand truth 
as we study the history of the world, with 
Eevelation for its key. History loses its pro- 
faneness as interpreted by the Bible, and we 
can recall events and their surroundings which 
were procured by man acting out his own vol- 
untariness so completely, that nothing but his 
own personal self is projected on the scene, and 
yet just these events and just these surround- 
ings made the necessary crisis which manifested 
the Christ. Could the Saviour have been born 
before the fullness of the- time decreed ? And 
what constituted the time's fullness and fitness ? 
Was it not a universal, earthly monarchy and a 
universal language? And whence came that 
monarchy but from human ambition or the 
universal language, but from commerce, curi- 
osity, luxury, taste, all human purely, and of 
the earth ? Man working in the dark to bring 
God out into light. 

So when the Saviour had lived- out his hu- 
man term, the Divine plan that required that he 



10 

should die contemplated likewise tlie metliod 
no less than the end. The pui'pose must have 
its complement in the means. The Christ must 
have a Judas and a Pilate, or else the world's 
salvation were forfeit. Yet were there ever two 
examples of pure voluntariness and independent 
action more signal than theirs ? Judas plotting, 
hesitating, chaffering, betraying and repenting ; 
Pilate arguing, excusing, deprecating, yet yield- 
ing and condemning, are the very impersona- 
tions of free ^Y\[\ and voluntary accountability. 
So do the destroying deeds of devils illustrate 
the salvation of Christ. 

We need not linger on history any longer to 
establish the principle, as a fast truth of the 
world, that God overrules the changes of the 
times, in order to bring out the peculiar glory 
of his anointed Son — but for our present use, 
let us look at it in its prospective bearings. 

Our text is not yet fulfilled. There still are, 
and shall be, overturnings, overturnings, over- 
turnings among men, of which the presiding 
purpose shall be all divine and Christly. They 
shall, each and all, tend to bring out his king- 
dom into riper development. I say riper de- 
velopment, for all the influences of that king- 
dom are not yet fruited. The power of the 
Gospel is a thing of growth and succession. It 



11 



was necessary to gi>aft it on human nature in 
separate cions, coming into bearing at different 
periods. The earliest ages of the Church 
learned mainly the devotional and pious ele. 
ment of the Gospel, while it is only in its later 
periods that its ethical influence has burst into 
gi'owth. The first and great commandment was 
accepted first, and it sprang forth in the luxuri- 
ant godliness which makes the early Church 
seem so freshly holy through all the ages. But 
Christians were slower in accepting the second 
cardinal law of Christ's kingdom, " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself." Their godliness 
is not yet thoroughly mated with charity, and 
this life-principle of Christian ethics yet seeks a 
nobler and wider development. When this 
shall have become universal—when godliness 
and charity, twin sisters of a divine birth, shall 
walk hand in hand through the world, weh 
comed and adorned alike mth royal honors 
from men's willing hearts, then will begin, the 
hallelujah period of the Church; for the king^ 
doms of the world will have become the 
kingdoms of our Lord and of hi^ Christ. 
Christ's reign will be unhindered in any one of 
its declared purposes; deliverance to the cap. 
tive, the opening of the prison-doors to them 
that are bound, eyesight to the bHnd, and the 



12 



liealing of all broken hearts. Tlie grand rule 
of muUial conduct among men will be, " to do to 
others as we would they should do to us." The 
world wiU need no other redress for its disqual- 
ifications and wretchedness. God can claim no 
worthier tribute for his Son than a world^ of 
men changed divinely into an equal and loving 

brotherhood. 

In the changes of the world, then, we are to 
look for the steady advance of those great prin- 
ciples which grow from the Gospel of Christ, 
and which. Christ's reign was intended to illus- 
trate. And those principles are, as we have 
seen, the establishing of human rights and the 
improvement of the human condition, morally, 
socially, politically; the awarding to each man 
his prerogatives as a child of the Heavenly 
Parent ; the loosing of every bond but those of 
rational and moral obligation; the breaking of 
all subjection but that voluntary allegiance to 
law, which is the sublimest act of human imle- 
pendence, and the crown of humanity. This 
is the liberty wherewith Christ makes all men 
free. And to this the progress of religion and 
the revolutions of the times infallibly tend. 
For not only does our practical Christianity 
take the form of philanthropy more tlian ever, 
in its missions, its hospitals, its asylums; its 



13 

care for tlie body, as well as the soul ; its reme- 
dies for social evils, as well as spii'itual ; but 
every civil cliange of our times looks toward 
the enlargemeut and elevation of humanity. 
Even the first French devolution, which re- 
versed the proverb that " Satan is clothed as an 
angel of light," and was, instead, a celestial idea 
mantled with hellish horrors ; which wrote its 
edicts with daggers, drawn and dripping from 
human hearts ; even this mighty overturn left 
not itself without extenuation, in the thoughts 
which it set adiift in the world, that stirred the 
world's mind to grand and solemn issues. 

That sublime idea lived on, when the revolu- 
tion was past ; lived on, when the horrors had 
subsided into the pit again and the blood-stains 
were faded out ; still lives on, in the Christian 
sentiment of brotherhood, and will live till 
Christ comes again, and live forever, proving 
itself celestial by its immortality. 

So in the more recent changes of the times. 
See it in Italy — ^poor Italy, as we used to think — 
the cemetery of national character, where you 
moved among memorials of dead beauty and 
grandeur, and trod on relics of glory at every 
step ; where the living humanity seemed taper- 
ed down to a point, \\athout any j)ith or fibre, 
but only soft succulence; where men's souls 



14 

seemed shriveled into absorption by tlie press- 
ure of despotism, civil and spiritual — Italy, 
glorious Italy now, has been overturned, over- 
turned, overturned. The graves are opened. 
The manhood that was bm-ied there is awake 
again, in the strength and beauty of the resiu'- 
rection. We have stood amazed at the sudden- 
ness and completeness of the change, in which 
despot after despot fled away, in a terror that 
was ready to call on the mountains to fall upon 
them and the hills to cover them; while the 
people possessed themselves of freedom and 
empire, as calmly as if the right had never 
been contested nor the possession broken for a 
moment. What a splendid demonstration it is 
of man's capacity for self-government and free- 
dom — for self-government is freedom; and 
what a long leap of progress our race has 
taken in the emancipation of Italy ! Will any 
man say that this overturn is not of God, 
for the speedier manifestation of his Christ? 
We know, indeed, the human agencies that 
worked the work. We know how French 
policy, and Austrian fear, and Papal bigotry, 
and Neapolitan meanness helped on the result, 
drawing or driving the enslaved peo2~>le into 
revolution and independence. We know that 
not every cause and motive was divine and 



15 

Cliristly, but, in part., basely human. Yet the 
result, how worthy of di\dnity and of Chiist ! 
A free people, a free government, a free Gospel, 
is not this the liberty of Christ, social, civil 
and religious ? 

And when the work goes on to complete- 
ness ; when, as in the case of Jerusalem, God 
shall take away not only the crown of despo- 
tism, but the diadem too ; when king and priest 
shall tyi-annize no more ; when he who wears 
both crown and diadem, claiming to be both 
temporal and spiritual sovereign of the earth, 
shall be superseded; when the clay and iron 
feet of Nebuchadnezzar's image, which repre- 
sents the Papal dominion, shall crumble away, 
and Rome, no longer " lone mother of dead 
empires," shall be the royal city of an evan- 
gelized Italy, will not all this fresh freedom of 
soul and body, deliverance to the captive, sight 
to the blind, demonstrate the acceptable year 
of the Lord, and prove that Christ is come, 
whose right it is? 

See how the overturn in Russia tends 
toward the same issue. The serf is a slave 
no longer, but one with a recognized manhood 
in him. The agency here was not the same as 
in Italy. There, freedom was the claim of 
the people; in Russia it was the gift of the 



r 



16 

despot. In tlie one, it came from within; in 
the other, from without. With one it was an 
inspiration; to the other a revelation. Yet 
the same divine spirit of beneficence wrought 
alike in both, aiming at the same triumph of 
Christ in the world. "We have not, indeed, 
seen the issue of the measure in Russia, and 
there are signs that bode confusion. Yet we 
may safely be hopeful of the result; because 
the experiment runs in the line of God's great 
purposes of love to the race. There is no idea 
so plastic and creative in its influence on char- 
acter as the idea of liberty ; none so fertile of 
improvement, or that lifts a man so surely up 
to the level of his destiny. And I may add, 
that no social experiment was ever tried that 
has proved so harmless as the gift of free- 
dom. I say the gift of freedom, because 
when freedom is quarreled for and battled for, 
it may sometimes carry its habit of fierceness 
too long. Born of cruelty and suckled with 
blood, its first strength may be savage. But 
let freedom be conferred as a Christian boon, 
in the spirit and temper of Christ, and there 
will always be found enough of that essential 
princij)le of humanity which responds to a felt 
divinity to insure for the experiment a grateful 
welcome, and therefore the perfect safety of 



17 

gratitude. So far, then, from despairing for. 
the freed serfs of Russia, let us look upon their 
emancipation as another streak of dawn, her- 
alding the day of Christ. 

And now your thoughts fly back from 
Europe, to brood on our own nest of troubles, 
hatching and to be hatched. " I will overtuni, 
overturn, overturn it." And is this 006? s over- 
turn, that is shaking onr nation almost to 
pieces, reversing its order, buffeting its enter- 
prise, confounding its ambition, drawing an 
extinguisher over its glory, and bringing in 
chaos and old night? Who dares to doubt it? 

We know, indeed, but too well, the human 
agencies that have been busy in it. We can 
trace out the separate lines of causation which 
converged into the long, strong pull that almost 
laid the pillars of our temple flat ; and we say, 
" but for this contingency, or that unprincipled 
act, the country would have been safe ." We say 
that, " but for Northern fanaticism, or South- 
ern ambition, the one as restless and the other as 
craving as the sea, this mischief had not hap- 
pened." We saw the very match applied at 
Fort Sumter that exploded the Union. We 
charge the tedious train of our disasters upon 
plotting politicians, and upon imbecile or half- 



18 

hearted generals ; and almost every man. thinks 
that he could right almost every wrong. 

Was there ever a crisis in which so many 
human mismanagements and blunders were 
crowded together pell-mell ? And does God 
ride on this tempest of confusion ? Yes, breth- 
ren, and as the sovereign Christ. The times are 
in his hand, and he holds them for his Son. We 
did not doubt it once. We used to believe that 
we were his elect nation. We thought he had 
gathered here specimen men from all the peo- 
ples of the world to make one great nation of, 
which should stand forth as a model for the 
world — great because free, and prospering be- 
yond precedent. 

We published a manifesto to the world in 
our Declaration and Constitution, exhibiting the 
most perfect theory of government ever con- 
ceived, and we boasted that in practice it was 
as beni2;n as it was wise and free. We chal- 
lenged the admiration of the nations, and they 
gave us admiration not unmixed with envy ; 
and we were proud of the admiration, and the 
envy too. Did not God see this ? Did he not 
hear our world-shout : " Is not this great Baby- 
lon, wdiich Ave have builded for our glory ?" 
And could we expect him to bear it ? Could he 



19 

bring in Lis Christ upon sucli a proud nation as 
we ? Could Christ reign here in the glorious 
beauty of his Gospel, while the national charac- 
ter was bloated into deformity with its self-con- 
sciousness and arrogance ? Must not his sceptre 
make itself felt in discipline before it could be 
felt in blessing ? We sometimes hear it said, 
that God is visiting the nation for its sins. 
And the alleged sins are catalogued, and count- 
ed out in long and forbidding series. But 
many of these allegations are simply com- 
monplace, others are simply absurd, and most 
of them are only the average sins of nations in all 
ages. Corruption belongs to courts ; and bribeiy 
to Parliaments and Congresses ; and peculation 
to offices of trust ; and trickery to trade, all over 
the world. These sins of ours are not peculiar 
nor preeminent. But our discipline is both. 
We must, therefore, if we would be wise, seek 
for the provocation in some sin that is eminent- 
ly American, and eminently bad. Find it our 
overweening and profane self-conceit. It is 
enough to move the displeasure of heaven, for 
it arrogates the supremacy which God has not 
abdicated ; and he ^vill not give his glory to 
another. 

The old Jew gloried in his Jerusalem, and 
while he remembered that it was the holy city of 



20 

Ms God ; liis patriotism was piety. But wlien 
he mixed in the large alloy of national pride and 
forgot the nation's Jehovah, then God took away 
the crown and the diadem, and overturned, 
overturned, overtui-ned it. There was a cor- 
resjDondency and a proportion in the case. The 
punishment bore the same complexion as the 
sin. So it is with us, and as every thing too 
high top23les to the inevitable fall, our towering 
pride has tumbled us into wi'eck. The probe 
has touched the peccant part. The disci]3line has 
struck the fault in its very face, and when the 
stagger and the blindness have passed off, per- 
haps we shall accept the lesson of humility as 
worthy of a thanksgiving. If we do, we are 
saved, and Christ's reigning day will then shine 
upon us gloriously. Although we looked no 
further than this then, we might say : " It is 
God's overtui'n, and for Christ's sake." 

But we may look further and higher than 
this. Although we have been so accustomed 
to regard our political system as the one best 
adapted to the great end of human advance- 
ment, yet in this we may be in error. A great 
united people — a national entity, nearly cover- 
ing a continent, and almost equivalent to a 
world in itself, is an imposing agency — one, we 
might almost think, indispensable, to Divine 



21 

Providence itself; and so we hug- the Union, as 
eacli man's otlier and liiglier self. It is tlie ob- 
ject of our reverent love, next only to our re- 
ligion. Around it our patriotism weaves all its 
entranced affections. It calls fortli the dis'niiied 
tribute of our self devotion, even, if need be, to 
blood and life, and we gladly lay ourselves at 
its feet as a living sacrifice, and say : " My 
country, it is for tliee." Ennobling passion, lift- 
ing man out of bis accidents, and sliakinf^ the 
dust from the wings of his soul, for a flight 
wider and nearer to heaven. The war has so 
nobly developed the power of our patriotism, 
that every man may breathe freer for the de- 
monstration. 

But how, if the national entity be broken 
to pieces— its unity dissolved ? Where is our 
country then, and what becomes of tlie great 
human interests that we thought were garnered 
up in it, and no where else ? My brethren, these 
great human .interests are Grod's and Christ's, 
and God will take care of them, for his Son's 
sake. Kemember that there are no necessities 
to him but essential truth and right. He can 
do without us, and without the Union of the na- 
tion, but he can not do without these great ends 
that the Union was meant to promote; the 
development of man into the highest freedom 



22 

of soul and body. This end, no doubt, be will 
secure, for it is the purpose of the covenanted 
reign and glory of Christ to exalt him that is 
low, and abase him that is high ; to open dark- 
ened eyes, and bid the oppressed go free. But 
in securing this end, he is fettered by no prece- 
dent, and tied to no measures. 

He may demolish our republic, and with it its 
beautiful theory of freedom ; and all because the 
republic has not been true to its theory. But 
the freedom he will accomj^lish, if not by our 
means, then by his own. Nay, we can see al- 
ready, that whether our Union be maintained 
or not, that great result is virtually secured. 
However we may look upon the institution of 
slavery, from whatever standpoint ; and whether 
our sympathies and affinities go out for the 
master or his bondman, it is impossible not to 
see that henceforward it can not be such as 
it has been. That same Sumter gun was the 
morning signal of a new day in America for 
them that are bound. It is rising up from the 
horizon, hour by hour. You and I can not help 
or hinder its career. Our Union or disunion can 
not make or mar its glory now. It is too late. 
It is the iuevitable sun of righteousness, with 
human healing in its beams. It may be dimmed 
by a passing cloud of mistaken policy or of dis- 



23 

aster to onr arms, and we may fail to mark its 
movement u]) the heavens. Yet it rises higher 
and higher, and when it cuhninates, its meri- 
dian light will shine right down upon an emanci- 
pated land ; and in that mid-day light, there will 
not be one shadow ; among the freemen not one 
bondman. This is the promised day of Christ's 
reign, and if it takes a threefold overturning for 
its accomplishment, it will come to pass even as 
God has promised to his Son. Bless him to-day 
for this. 

But this is future. Have we nothino- to 
thank him for in the past ? Yes, for the 
wonderful demonstration given by our j^eople 
of their capacity for self-government. How re- 
bellion has awakened a patriotism, whose very 
existence we doubted ! How true has the loy- 
alty of the people been even in its gi^and 
anger ! How free the land has been from the 
lawlessness and violence of mobs ! How the 
war has called out the benevolent affections of 
the people ! How religion has been revived, 
even in camps, and the whole power of Christian 
zeal and sympathy been enlisted for the avmj, 
follo^dng the drum-beat with Bibles as well as 
bandages — Avith preachers, as well as physi- 
cians — nay, inspiring noble women, as well as 
noble men, with an equal heroism of self-devo- 
tion, until the whole people has learned the 



24 

exalted lesson — may tliey never forget it — of 
living outside of themselves, and for others' 
good ! As we witness tliis, we may thank God 
that we have lived to see this ; for it is worth 
living for. We may thank him that war in this 
land is not an unmitisrated horror, and that 
human blood and wounds can bes^et the most 
beautiful forms of character, and nourish the 
angelic graces of our better life. 

And then, since the glorious boon of a free 
government is dear to us, and since God him- 
self has seemed to love and delight in it, we 
are by no means to despair of the republic. 
This danger may be designed to make it yet 
dearer, by proving its strength and sufficiency. 
This overturn may be in order to shake the 
repuldic into consistency and settle it more 
firmly on its foundations — to develop powers 
that have been dormant, and great principles 
that we have ignored in practice. We are fast 
learning the value and use of both, from the 
danger of losing every thing besides. 

We ought not to despond, moreover, for in 
this war the nation acts as a representative 
people — for all other peoples. She has assumed 
the championship of free principles for all man- 
kind. We have given pledge, in time past, 
that our polity was adequate to all the emer- 



25 

gencies of civil life. Other nations have fol- 
lowed our track with more or less of speed, 
but none have yet reached the encounter of 
such a crisis. And now they stand still and 
look on with various wish. Kings, nobles, 
castes, and eveiy form of despotism, long for 
our discomfiture, for we battle against despo- 
tism, in its exquisite power; while the real 
manhood of the world — that huge multitude 
that makes the mass of human life, whose heart 
is the heart of humanity, and whom Christ 
came to lift up and to bless — they rejoice 
when we rejoice and weep when we mourn. 
Oiu' struggle is life or death to them. Our 
defeat would seem to put back the clock of 
progress to that midnight-hour when its next 
stroke would be one, and the world would 
have to begin anew, and wait for the morning. 
With so much at stake, we must not despair, 
but peril every thing, rather, for success. Our 
disasters may be God's method of delay, to 
bring us more into felt dependence on him, and 
so more in harmony with his plans. Let every 
man, then, refresh his fealty by a new resolve 
to sustain the Government to the last, and let 
him sanctify this resolve by praying that God 
would not only retrieve the republic, but 
wreathe its exalted head ^vith the crowning 



26 

glory of CLxist's reign, in wliicli pure freedom 
shall be the universal law of life. 

But if in the overturnings of the times our 
admirable polity should, after all, be fatally 
dismembered, even then we may not cease to 
thank God for its happy past ; to thank him for 
a history which has developed some of the 
brightest and noblest manhood in the world ; 
to thank him for two generations of men to 
whom our republic was a blessing, and to 
thank him, finally, if it must fall, that such a 
re2:)ublic was necessary to denote, even by its 
fall, the ripeness of the world for Christ's full 
reigTi. 

This, which would be matter of perpetual 
praise, may well be a theme for this day's 
thanksgiving; and even if the grim ghost of 
dissolution shake its gory locks at us, and 
the gloom of thick-coming fears darken the 
day, we can still thank him for the overturning, 
as we pray, " let him reign whose right it is ;" 
" thy kingdom come." Amen. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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